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CommLine Online May 12, 2010

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USC Annenberg salutes Class of 2010

As part of the University of Southern California’s 127th Commencement ceremonies, the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism will award bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees to almost 900 students on Friday, May 14.

Richard Rosenblatt, co-founder, chairman and CEO of the social media firm Demand Media, will give the commencement address at the School of Communication ceremony, where the faculty will confer degrees in communication, global communication, communication management and public diplomacy. At the School of Journalism ceremony, graduates in journalism, specialized journalism and public relations will hear remarks given by Harris Diamond, CEO of the public relations firm Weber Shandwick.

Among the members of USC Annenberg’s Class of 2010 are 28 USC Renaissance, Discovery and Global Scholars, who have been recognized by the University for the multidimensional character of their studies. Also receiving accolades is Neil Anand Wali, who will earn his bachelor’s degree in communication. Wali is one of two USC seniors awarded the University Trustees Award, given each year to the graduating senior man who has attained the highest grade point average of all male students during his four years at USC.

The communication ceremony will be held under the shade of a large tent on the grass of McCarthy Quad, adjacent to USC’s landmark Doheny Library. Journalism students will graduate nearby, on the Argue Plaza Lawn and next to the USC Alumni House, the oldest building on the USC campus. Both ceremonies start promptly at 10:30 a.m., and attendees are encouraged to arrive no later than 10:15 a.m.

Both of USC Annenberg's ceremonies will be broadcast live on the Web starting at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, May 14. Viewing will also be available in the USC Annenberg building, with the communication ceremony simulcast in the East Lobby and the journalism ceremony in the Annenberg Auditorium.

USC’s main commencement ceremony will be held earlier in the day, beginning at 8:30 a.m. More than 40,000 graduates and their families are expected to participate in a day of festivities across campus. Those wishing to attend the main ceremony are recommended to arrive as early as 7 a.m., to ensure plenty of time to navigate the crowds.

New-media entrepreneur Rosenblatt has built a strong record of success in bringing innovative businesses to market. Six months after graduating from the USC Gould School of Law, he co-founded the Internet startup iMALL, a pioneer in user-generated content, and negotiated its sale to Excite@Home for $565 million eight years later. More recently, he helped transform Myspace.com from an unknown website to one of the most recognized brands on the World Wide Web.

Diamond’s success as CEO of one of the world’s leading public relations firms has been chronicled in The New York Times, Washington Times and BusinessWeek, and he has been cited as among the “100 most influential PR people of the 20th century” by PRWeek. His high-level strategic communications counsel has led the firm to be named an “Agency of the Decade” by Advertising Age and the “Global Agency of the Year” in 2009 by The Holmes Report. Diamond concurrently serves as CEO of the Constituency Management Group of the Interpublic Group of Companies, of which Weber Shandwick is a subsidiary.

USC’s commencement address will be given by Steven B. Sample, who is retiring after 19 years of service as president of the University.

Truthdig - headed by professor Scheer and USC Annenberg students and alumni - wins Webby Award for Best Political Blog

The Webby Awards, hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, are the leading international honor for excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile sites. Winners will be honored at the 14th Annual Webby Gala on June 14 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.

"The fact that our fellow nominees included sites we visit daily like The Huffington Post, The Economist, The New Yorker and The Atlantic only makes this news all the more humbling and gratifying, but most important, we’re happy to share this award with our community of readers —our biggest asset and the reason we keep doing what we do," Truthdig said in an announcement.

"This is an unparalleled honor," Webby Awards executive director David-Michel Davies said in his award letter to Truthdig. "With nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 U.S. states and over 60 countries worldwide, the 14th Annual Webby Awards is the biggest in our history and continues to be the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Your work truly represents the best of the Web."

This is Truthdig's second Webby win, having received both the official jury prize and the People's Voice award for Best Political Blog in 2007.

About the Webby Awards:

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web's infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which includes an Executive 750-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities, and Associate Members who are former Webby Award Winners and Nominees and other Internet professionals.

Wilson tells FCC the United States is at a "1967 moment"

Dean Ernest J. Wilson III (pictured) described the “critical moment” that public broadcasting faces today, as he spoke to the Federal Communications Commission on April 30. Wilson, who also serves as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, delivered a special address to the panel at the opening of its workshop, titled “Public and Other Noncommercial Media in the Digital Era.”

“We are at this special moment. We are at what some of us have called 'a 1967 moment.' And the future is ours to grasp. We simply have to step forward with – as (Ford Foundation President) Luis Ubiñas said – the innovation and the imagination to seize that. This is a critical moment in the life of public service and public service media. And the challenge is for us to move beyond public broadcasting… We’re at a moment when we have to move beyond public broadcasting as it’s traditionally defined into something else – public service media that we are still in the process of defining. We’re between the old and the new. We have to challenge ourselves with the imagination and the energy to become public service media.”

Students in communication professor Tom Hollihan's Communication 580: Media and Politics class were assigned to do a presentation to propose possible solutions aimed at solving the problems of contemporary politics in the United States — and one group of students wound up with extra help from California Attorney General and former Governor Jerry Brown.

Students (pictured, from left to right with Brown) Jacqueline Barkett, Cortez Ervin, George Villanueva, Adrienne Ng (not pictured) and Rena Pacheco (not pictured) suggested communication-based reforms that might rehabilitate the practice of politics in the United States.

"We went straight to the source by interviewing Jerry Brown at a political fundraiser and he inspired our project," Barkett said. "In a rather candid interview, he made suggestions regarding media reform in terms of increasing voter turnout. He also stressed the importance of reaching audiences through social media in order to get voter attention."

Hollihan said the assignment was about students finding creative strategies to rehabilitate electoral politics in the United States.

"We spent a lot of time looking at why there is a disinterested electorate, low voter turnout, and high cynicism about politics and public officials, and students were assigned to find strategies to remedy this," Hollihan said. "This group quite effectively achieved this, and as a result had a wonderful experience to learn about politics in a first-hand way that generated great enthusiasm for the political process."

Barkett said when she first signed up for the class she assumed there would be more discussion about the international arena. "But there was so much I didn't know about the political process such as the strategies of campaigning, TV spots, polling, etc. I found the class very interesting and would recommend it to anybody who is interested in the political process."

What are the most exciting emerging technologies? How are the key players adapting to the demands of various global markets?

These are questions Dean Ernest J. Wilson III tackled as the moderator of a panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference “Shaping the Future” on April 26. Wilson led a discussion among panelists Laurent Gil, president and CEO of Viewdle; Michael Gough, vice president of Adobe Experience Design; and Hal Varian, chief economist at Google (video here).

Wilson posed several queries to launch the conversation: “How do companies today design genuinely global strategies to take advantage of the kind of dynamics… where innovation takes place all the time, at all elements of our society?” And: “How does one set up the institutional structures inside organizations and inside companies to create incentives to go out and look globally for these new technologies?

The Milken Institute summarized the discussion this way: “Today technology firms need fresh strategies for specific segments of the global marketplace. Markets are maturing throughout the developed world; the ability to keep sales thriving in North America, Europe, Japan and South Korea hinges on pushing the boundaries of rich multimedia experiences, super-fast broadband and new ways to interact with computing and integrate it into daily life. Meanwhile, there are vast new markets to tap in the developing world, but these consumers demand products with low costs and heightened durability and reliability under more adverse conditions. The tech firms that maintain an edge are focusing on developing new products tailored to today's media-savvy consumer — from on-demand content and online software, richer multimedia and changing interfaces to computing functions that are integrated into cars and homes behind the scenes. At the same time, these companies must find ways to package more established products to appeal to customers in China, India, Latin America and the Middle East.”

Leaders in media and public affairs join advisory board of USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy

By Geoffrey Baum

Four leaders from media and public policy have joined the advisory board of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. The new board members are Ina Coleman, managing director, Feminist Majority Foundation; Clothilde Hewlett, a partner in the San Francisco office of Nossaman LLP; Gary Pruitt, chairman of the board, CEO and president of The McClatchy Company; and Robert H. Tuttle, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Short biographical sketches of the new board members are provided below.

“Each of these board members will make an important substantive contribution to our work – Gary Pruitt to our efforts to explore the changing face of journalism; Ina Coleman to our work on women and communication leadership; Bob Tuttle to our programs with the State Department and in global public affairs; and Cloey Hewlett to our work on civic engagement,” said Geoffrey Cowan (pictured above left), USC University Professor and director of the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. “We look forward to their insights and guidance as we confront some of the most challenging issues in the world of communication.”

The advisory board of the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy meets regularly and is co-chaired by Mickey Kantor, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Mayer Brown and Norm Pearlstine, chief content officer for Bloomberg News.

New advisory board members

Ina Coleman (left) is managing director in the Los Angeles office of the Feminist Majority Foundation, where she provides leadership in strategic planning, budget management, marketing and operations management. She directed the launch of Ms. in the Classroom, a full-color, digital version of Ms. magazine for use as an educational tool at colleges and universities across the country. She also implemented the organization's social media initiatives using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to engage national and global online communities. She is an experienced business executive and chairs the advisory board of ERES, Inc., an educational consulting firm. In addition, she is a member of the advisory council for Stanford University’s School of Humanities and Sciences. She holds an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Communications from Stanford University.

Clothilde V. Hewlett (right) is a partner based in the San Francisco office of Nossaman LLP. She focuses on public policy and is a national leader on diversity. She assists clients with policy issues in California and at the federal level, across several industries. She also assists clients obtain government funding and contracts and facilitates the creation of public-private partnerships in the areas of transportation infrastructure and real estate by assisting with the integration of legal and political issues. Hewlett has served as an Assistant District Attorney and as a San Francisco Police Commissioner for the City and County of San Francisco. She has also been Director of Moral Character Determinations for the State Bar of California. She has served under California governors Deukmejian and Davis, specifically as a member of the California Council on Criminal Justice, Undersecretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency, and as Interim Director of the Department of General Services. Among her many community leadership positions, she serves on the boards of the San Francisco 49'ers Foundation and the University of California, Berkeley Alumni Association. She holds a B.A. and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Gary B. Pruitt (left) is the chairman, president and CEO of The McClatchy Company. Headquartered in Sacramento, California, McClatchy is a leading newspaper and digital publisher with 30 daily newspapers and 43 nondailies in 15 states. McClatchy-owned newspapers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star, The Charlotte Observer and The (Raleigh) News & Observer. Pruitt joined McClatchy in 1984 as general counsel. He was named publisher of The Fresno Bee in 1991, vice president of operations and technology in 1994, president and chief operating officer in 1995, chief executive officer in 1996 and chairman in 2001. He is a former chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, a former chairman of the James Irvine Foundation and a former vice chairman of the Associated Press Board of Directors. He continues to serve on the Associated Press Board of Directors. Pruitt holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and earned a master’s degree in public policy and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Robert Holmes Tuttle (right) served as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's from 2005 to 2009. A businessman with extensive experience in the private sector, Tuttle is co-managing partner of Tuttle-Click Automotive Group, one of the nation's largest retail automotive companies. He co-chairs the Pacific Council on International Policy and has served on the boards of several prominent civic organizations, including the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, where he was Chairman from 2001 to 2004. He joined the White House staff in 1982 as Special Assistant to President Reagan. In 1985, President Reagan appointed him Director of Presidential Personnel, a position he held until the end of the administration. By Presidential appointment, Tuttle served on the board of directors of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for four years. A California native, he graduated from Stanford University and received his M.B.A. from the University of Southern California.

Fong to serve on panel at The Pacific Council’s China Member Committee

Journalism Professor Mei Fong will participate in a panel discussion titled “China Choices: Navigating the Passage from Personal Experience to Public Understanding” on June 1 held by The Pacific Council China Member Committee.

Fong will be joined by Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal and Dr. Jeffrey Wasserstrom of UC-Irvine.

Fong is a former China Correspondent at the Wall Street Journal and will discuss her personal experiences in China and in journalism.

Assistant Director of the School of Journalism Laura Castañeda, Director of Web Technologies Wendy Chapman and Senior Research Fellow Nonny de la Peña have been awarded a $10,000 2010 Teaching with Technology grant by USC's Center for Scholarly Technology.

They will develop a teaching module over the summer titled "Second Life: Covering Disasters in a Virtual Classroom."

This year’s Teaching with Technology grants focused on advancing the university’s emergency preparedness efforts. The 2010 program offered grants up to $10,000 for the development of one-to three-week student assignments that are accessible through Blackboard.

“This year's grant proposals were extremely competitive, and we are most pleased that your proposal was selected,” wrote Otto Khera, Director, Center of Scholarly Technology.

Kun’s exhibit “Jews on Vinyl” opens at Skirball Cultural Center

Communication and Journalism professor Josh Kun will speak at the opening of his new exhibit “Jews on Vinyl” on May 11 at the Skirball Cultural Center. His exhibit will be on view from May 12 through Sept. 5.

MySpace Music President Courtney Holt will be joining Kun for the opening event exhibition talk that will include a slideshow and rare musical clips.

Kun’s exhibit, which he co-curated with Roger Bennett, pieced together thousands of vinyl LP’s from the 1940s to the 1980s to show the stories of Jews in America.

The exhibit is set in a 1950s-style living room equipped with listening stations and album art. The exhibit is a project of Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation.

Kun was also featured as a guest blogger at LA Weekly. In the article, his new exhibition was featured.

Evelyn McDonnell (pictured right, M.A. Specialized Journalism – The Arts ’10) has received an invitation to teach creative writing as a “new media specialist” at Loyola Marymount University following her graduation this May.

McDonnell, a published writer (MamaRama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock n’ Roll) and journalist – one of the several mid-career professionals who populate USC Annenberg’s Specialized Journalism program – announced her assistant professorship at the closing dinner for the program at the University Club on April 26.

“I'll be teaching how to write for interactive media, and I want my teaching to be as interactive as possible,” McDonnell said. “The students will be digital natives -- I'm not -- and I expect I'll be learning from them. I really prefer dialogue to lecturing. I'll have them blog, comment on each other's blogs, use social media, etc.”

McDonnell will become Assistant Professor of English in Journalism and New Media for the Fall 2010, and both the Journalism and English faculty at LMU are looking forward to a fruitful semester.

“We know Evelyn will play an important role as we plan and develop our new, expanded program in Journalism,” said professor Linda A. Bannister of LMU’s English Department, who received her master’s and doctorate degrees from USC. “(We) are thrilled that a writer/critic of her considerable talents and unique voice will be working with our students.

Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts Henry Jenkins (pictured with McDonnell) worked with McDonnell this past year on a variety of projects, and he said he had already read her enlightening, feminist books on pop music before the semester began, adding that her input in class always placed her ahead of the curve – even with her admitted then-lack of experience with new media, with the exception of her work on the now-defunct MOLI.com.

“She's a gifted cultural journalist, one who is asking cutting-edge questions about how media change is impacting opportunities for cultural production and circulation,” Jenkins said of McDonnell. “Her work combines a journalist's eye for the telling quotation or detail and the cultural analysts grasp of the big picture. She's kept me on my toes this year with probing questions and an urgent need to know how artists may survive to make what they love to make in the face of a shifting cultural economy and how they might negotiate the contradictions of a world where remix is king and where copyright enforcement is increasingly constrictive.”

McDonnell, who in addition to writing for her blog is working on a new book, said that she has many game-changing life decisions ahead; but Jenkins, for one, is focused on the decision to buy yet another McDonnell tome.

“I can not wait to read the very important book that is sure to emerge from the interviews she's been doing this year with some of the country's most imaginative and innovative popular artists, working in a range of different media,” Jenkins said.

Besides Jenkins, McDonnell studied with many of Annenberg’s most innovative and established faculty, saying that those two approaches were not necessarily contradictory.

“Tim Page and Sasha Anawalt and the Specialized Journalism program in general were very open to journalism's expanding nature in the digital age – which is crucial,” McDonnell said. “Plus, I'll never forget Sasha enthusing about the merits of the motion of skipping.”

Skipping?

“I said (in Evelyn’s class) that it is impossible to be unhappy and to skip,” Anawalt said. “Skipping, which we all did as children, produces the emotion of happiness.”

And McDonnell – who recently relocated back to her native Southern California from Miami Beach, only to consider another move to be closer to LMU’s Westside campus – said that she, her husband Bud, and son Cole, plus their numerous pets, will be happy no matter where they end up living and skipping next year.

“I certainly have many happy memories of California,” said McDonnell, whose father earned his Ph.D from USC. “So there's an amazing full circle trip that USC has enabled. I'm walking lighter on my feet than I have in years.”

Hollywood, Health & Society hosts event in Washington D.C.

Hollywood, Health & Society, a program of USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center, hosted an event called “Global Health in Lights: Hollywood’s Master Storytellers & Stars Highlight Global Health in Entertainment” on March 24 at the Library of Congress, James Madison Building in Washington, DC.

The event aimed to educate Congress about how Hollywood portrays global health, what viewers can learn about health from television, and the effectiveness of entertainment education in the global health arena. The panel discussion was attended by 100 people. Panelists included Mariska Hargitay, co-star of Law & Order: SVU; as well as Dr. Neal Baer, Executive Producer of the show. Sandra de Castro Buffington, Director of Hollywood, Health & Society moderated and presented programmatic impact results.

Published and Presented

While 2009 was hardly a banner year for the public relations and communication industries, it does not appear to have been nearly as calamitous as some have suggested, and certainly not as bad as may have been the case in prior recessions. 2010 will be better, but organizations remain very cautious about their public relations spending.

In 2009, 20.9 percent of GAP VI respondents experienced budget increases, 36.6 percent saw little or no change, and 42.5 percent saw decreases. When averaging all the responses, organizations reduced their 2009 budgets by a fairly moderate 5.3 percent. The average change among corporate respondents was -4.68 percent.

2010 looks like a better, but still very cautious, year. 28.8 percent expected budget increases over 2009, 49.7 percent expected no change, and 21.5 percent expected budget decreases. When averaging all the responses, organizations expect to increase their budgets by just 1.56 percent. Corporate respondents expect an increase of 1.94 percent.

"It appears that, despite much pessimism, we came out of 2009 in pretty good shape," noted Jerry Swerling (pictured), director of USC Annenberg's SCPRC. "2010 is certainly looking better, as evidenced by the recently announced first quarter earnings of the major agency holding companies, but an anticipated average budget increase of just 1.56 percent among clients clearly points to widely held caution. Still, we should be heartened by two factors. First, an increasing number of organizations are increasing their budgets. Second, from a historical perspective, it appears that we have weathered this recession far better than was the case in prior recessions, as many industry veterans will attest."

Public companies' "PR:GR Ratios" -- i.e., the amounts they spend on public relations or communication relative to their gross revenues -- remained relatively stable from 2007 (GAP V) to 2009 (GAP VI). For example, the average PR:GR Ratio for all public companies larger than $5 billion that responded to GAP VI was 0.07 percent, as compared with 0.08 percent for similar GAP V respondents. This suggests that budgets remained somewhat stable as a proportion of total organizational resources dedicated to communications.

Among all GAP VI corporate respondents, internal staff salaries and related costs accounted for 41 percent of the total PR/communication budget on average, as compared with 44 percent in 2007. Nearly 20 percent was paid to external PR agencies, as compared with 30.37 percent in 2007. Only 4.5 percent was allocated to evaluation and measurement, as compared with 5.8 percent in 2007.

"While much is being said and written about the importance of evaluation, there is little bottom line evidence to indicate that it is more of a priority today than it has been in the past, at least in terms of the financial resources invested in it," Swerling commented.

Staffing

GAP VI reveals some surprising data regarding staffing. In 2009, 61.6 percent of all 382 respondents actually increased the size of their internal staffs, 15.1 percent saw little or no change, and 23.2 percent decreased the size of their organizations.

Interestingly, companies that do business only in the United States increased staffing in 2009 by 1.5 percent, while international/global companies decreased staffing by 1.9 percent. This is consistent with budget data suggesting that U.S.-only companies had more positive budgetary experiences in 2009 than did international/global companies. However, the budget data also suggest that the staffing situation will reverse in 2010, with hiring at international/global companies outpacing U.S.-only companies.

Impact on Internal vs. External Resources

Only 23.2 percent of responding organizations reduced their staffs in 2009, with those reductions generally falling in the modest 1 percent to 5.5 percent range. However, in 2009, GAP VI respondents spent a much smaller percentage of their total budget -- 15.4 percent -- on compensation for outside agencies, than the 26.6 percent GAP V participants spent in 2007. While this decrease is totally consistent with data gathered by the SCPRC in February 2009, some of it may be attributable to the relatively larger size of many GAP VI respondents. Also relevant are findings in all six GAP studies showing that the most common reason for working with outside agencies is "extra arms and legs."

All of this may explain why internal budget cuts were generally modest (i.e., 5.3 percent on average), while substantial anecdotal evidence suggests that outside agencies experienced significantly larger reductions in revenue. The greater scalability of external agency relationships and the greater commitment to internal staffs were major factors in how organizations responded strategically to the recession. Instead of making wholesale internal cuts they froze or reduced salaries, reduced agency compensation, reduced programming, or a combination of the three.

Statistical Correlations

By means of statistically valid correlations among respondents' answers to multiple questions, SCPRC researchers were able to identify some fascinating patterns that reliably reflect true best practices. For example, respondents who reported both an increase in budget in 2009 and a reporting line to the C-Suite (chairman, chief executive officer, chief operating officer) grew by a far-better-than average 8 percent in 2009. They also were far more likely to indicate that they expected their budgets to grow by a healthy 5.9 percent in 2010. In contrast, those reporting to marketing expected budget increases of just 2.5 percent.

Likewise, GAP VI respondents who reported an increase in 2009 budgets were more likely to describe their organizations as being "long-term/strategic" rather than "short-term/tactical"; "proactive" rather than "reactive"; "flexible" rather than "rigid"; "innovative" rather than "non-innovative"; "democratic" rather than "autocratic"; and "people-first" rather than "profits-first."

Availability of GAP Results

To optimize user friendliness the massive GAP VI data will be published on a staggered basis in five incremental reports: 1 – Budgets/Staffing; 2 – Organization/Reporting; 3 - Responsibilities, Digital/Social Media, Evaluation; 4 - Use of Outside Agencies, Senior Management's Perceptions; and 5 - Best Practices and Executive Summary. Section 1 is now available for download on the SCPRC website.

Aronson’s new chapter published in The International Studies Encyclopedia

Cooper pens op-ed on replacing retiring Supreme Court justice

Journalism Professor and Director of Annenberg Digital News Marc Cooper wrote an op-ed titled “To Replace John Stevens, an Atheist” for the Los Angeles Times on May 4.

“As President Obama considers nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a debate bubbles as to whether religion should play a role in his choice,” Cooper wrote in the article. “This is a no-brainer. The religious views of the next justice of the high court must absolutely be a decisive factor.”

“When it comes to deciding who will be the ultimate arbiters and defenders of the most advanced and enlightened governing document in history, we would all be a lot better off if, instead, we asked ourselves, ‘What would Jefferson do?’” he continued.

Corwin documentary published online on Snagfilms

Writer in Residence Norman Corwin’s 1996 documentary “Corwin” was posted online at SnagFilms on April 30 in honor of his 100th birthday.

It was featured on the homepage that weekend and will be on the XPLR channel long term.

This feature documentary originally aired on PBS. Corwin was a writer and director during the Golden Age of Radio, whose productions routinely featured actors such as Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore.

This film showcases his radio plays and TV productions. Interviews with Norman Lear, CBS news anchor Charles Kuralt, and media historian Erik Barnouw are also featured in this documentary.

Jenkins gives talk at MIT; featured as guest speaker on radio show

Provost’s Professor in Journalism and Communication Henry Jenkins gave a speech at MIT’s Program in Comparative Media Studies, which he founded, on April 29. He discussed his two decades at MIT and his transition to USC.

Jenkins was also featured as a guest on the LifeTips Radio show in a segment titled “Don’t Underestimate the Consumer” on April 5. He talked with the show’s host about the direction of digital media, and its implications for education and literacy.

Jenkins was also interviewed on April 16 by Elisabeth Soep for Boing Boing. He discussed the relationship between fandom, literacy, and scholarship.

Additionally, Jenkins spoke in March at the TEDxNYED conference in New York on March 6.

Jenkins also recently published "Communities of Readers, Clusters of Practices" in DIY Media: Creating, Sharing and Learning with New Technologies, a collection edited by Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear.

He has also published "The Tomorrow That Never Was: Retrofuturism in the Comics of Dean Motter" in Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture, and Sequence, edited by Jorn Ahrens and Arno Meteling.

On May 18-19, Jenkins will be speaking at the Sandbox Summit at MIT. He will be giving the keynote presentation titled "Toying with Transmedia: The Future of Entertainment is Child's Play."

Kaplan to give lecture in Barcelona; pens article for Huffington Post

Director of the Norman Lear Center and holder of the Norman Lear Chair in Entertainment Martin Kaplan will give a lecture titled “Entertainment in a Digital Context” at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya Internet Interdisciplinary Institute in Barcelona, Spain on May 19.

At the lecture, Kaplan will provide a theoretical framework for understanding what entertainment is and its role in the economy. He will also discuss how the internet, digital technology and social media are changing the entertainment industry.

Kaplan also penned a May 11 article for the Huffington Post titled "What We 'Need to Know' About PBS After Moyers."

"I want Need to Know to succeed: PBS needs to prove to foundations and viewers that it deserves the public's money. (Disclosure: its terrific executive producer once executive produced a radio show I hosted.) But I think valuing 'Hmmm' more than 'Aha!' is too high a price to get Congress to keep kicking in its miserly 15% of public broadcasting's budget," he wrote in the article.

Plate pens op-ed on relations between North and South Korea

Senior Fellow at the Center for the Digital Future Tom Plate penned an op-ed titled “Who wants to war with N Korea?” for the Khaleej Times on April 27.

“Sometimes less is more – a lot more,” he wrote on the article. “It is true that there is not much that Lee Myung-bak could reasonably do, one way or the other, in response to the sinking of a South Korean naval patrol vessel in the Korean seas.”

“The time now is as propitious as it will ever be. For if in fact the North did the nasty deed, the cruel incident may yet be but another example of an infantile North Korea throwing its rattle out of its playpen, as if in desperate cry for help,” he said.

Reeves pens op-ed on Proposition 15

“Authored by state Sen. Loni Hancock, a Democrat from Berkeley, Proposition 15 would institute public financing for one state office, secretary of state,” he wrote.

“It was endorsed last week by the state's ranking political sage, George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times, not because he thought it was important in and of itself, but because, ‘It's a small, awkward step in a good direction.’ A good direction, he argued, is public financing, and Proposition 15 might lead to the overthrow of the state's constitutional ban on such financing,” Reeves continued.

Seib writes book review on “The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century”

Director of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy Philip Seib penned a book review on May 2 on the book “The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century” by Alan Brinkley.

“In this superbly thorough and engrossing biography, Brinkley, a history professor at Columbia University, shows how Luce, through his Timemagazine and its progeny, at least partly reached his goals,” wrote Seib in the article.

“Despite the reach of his publications and his hobnobbing with world leaders, how much influence had he really exercised? According to Brinkley, Luce's magazines ‘were mostly reflections of the middle-class world, not often shapers of it,’” wrote Seib.

The California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting partnered with the Chico Enterprise-Record to write a four-day series titled “A Burning Issue” to begin on May 13 in the E-R and the Oroville Mercury Register.

The Enterprise-Record, in partnership with the California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting, spent eight weeks examining the issue of wood smoke and health. Chico residents in Butte County may have a burn ban during poor air-quality days because of the amount of wood smoke in the area.